Living in a cosmopolitan place like Bangalore looks comforting and it seems to open up avenues to various arenas of life, which would have remained unconquered - Specifically referring to the eateries. Eateries ranging from pizza outlets to cuisines designed specifically for the Caribbean, Italian and the countries go unnumbered. But it’s not so easy for a jerk like me.
I face a humongous challenge whenever I enter a non-Indian outlet. It is this trivial, harmless pamphlet – The Menu Card. The challenge is because of my lack of vocabulary around the terminologies revolving around cooking. The first step is pronouncing the names written on the menu card. Ok…That’s done because of my friendly fellow diner, who would meticulously spell it out to me. Next stage of the contest is to understand the contents of the dish mentioned from its nomenclature. I mean things like Anti-Pasti (Which are supposedly Starters) are beyond my comprehension. And to maintain their ethnological diversity from other eateries, the dodgy menu card doesn’t possess a description of the dish that I am trying to ascertain and understand. I try dismantling the name into parts to identify with anything that I have heard, listened or read. Again my knowledge is most uprightly challenged. I again disturb my fellow diner for the same.
Sometimes I turn lucky. Though some of the eateries maintain their cultural anthropology, they do understand that a specimen like me always exists. So they give a brief description of the dish under question. But the dumber brain in me refuses to accept the differences between terms like tossed X, baked Y and so on. Then there are inputs of the dish that belong to a different genre, or better still, I belong to a unique backward league. It took me at least 10 outings to understand the difference between broccoli, spinach and other leafy vegetations that are used. And there are these different bases that are put to use to bring out the customized output. Even after all these complications, I see my mates customizing it further, by adding a dash of X and a pinch of Y. Maybe, I need to reside in a village.
Conveniently, I adopted a best practice approach to resolve this. I delegate my fellow diner to order the stuff for me and anyway, I don’t have any strong preferences about food. This works in my favor in two ways. One, the fellow diner feels honored and carefully customizes the dish in accordance with my tastes. Two, the waiter is relieved of dealing with a dim-witted chap, who would take at least quarter to an hour to order.
I miss my mom’s food even more now. Hopefully things would change or I may make the roadside ‘dhaba’ as my second home.
